Behind The Facade Lies A Man
by starlight1228
Summary: They all saw him as a heartless monster. But he had a story. It was just a matter of who cared enough to listen.


**MARCH 30TH, 2002**

* * *

They were just supposed to go and review the witnesses testimony for court, prep them for it. Marie had been nagging him about cutting a few legal corners on some of their cases, something that annoyed her to no end. They hadn't been expecting the ambush, hadn't done anything to deserve it but investigate the murder of a military personnel involved with incendiary weapons that also had connections to the Russian mob. But here they were, lying on the ground. He'd never felt such a pain before, not even when the anesthesia didn't work in that Army hospital in Iraq. They'd always been stingy with anesthesia, saving it for the ones in the most pain.

She whispered his name, barely audible, slowly moving her hand toward his. "I want you to tell Lily-"

"No Marie," he grunted, taking all his effort to summon the air to get the two words out. He could feel a warm liquid filling his lungs, suffocating himself with every breath he took. "You're going to go back to HS and prosecute these sons of bitches," he told her, coughing violently when he finished.

He heard her cry his name, frightened she would be the only one left. His vision was swimming, nothing was straight anymore. Except her eyes. Only they were growing out of focus, fixing themselves on some point in the horizon he could not see.

"Marie," he breathed, hoping she would focus. The only sound she could make was a grunt of recognition. "I'm going for the phone," he said, and her eyes looked into his. The man who had ambushed them under the pretense of getting them some water, had taken their briefcases, wallets and cell phones.

"You'll die," she told him, choking on her own words.

"I'm not going to bleed out in this damn apartment!" He hissed. He knew he wasn't going to make it, the effort of reaching the phone on the kitchen counter top would make his heartbeat go way up, expelling blood from his body at a rate five times faster than Maries. But he wasn't going to let her die here. She was going to live. He had met her the year he went to law school. He'd just finished his four-year stint as an officer in the US Army. She was a brilliant woman and a very by-the-book lawyer. They both had entered Homeland Security together, eventually becoming partners. In a motion that sent the floor in waves under his legs and his vision swooping, he sat up. He was _not _going to let some soldier for the Russian mob gun down two HS investigators and get away with it. By the time someone found them, he'd be in Moscow.

Before he lost his strength, he rose and launched himself onto the counter. Black spots danced in his eyes and he felt pain all over his body now, not just his chest. The end was not painless. No light at the end of the tunnel. The real world was falling away. Yet.

Madly grabbing for the phone and feeling it's hard plastic in his hands, he fell to the floor. Not the best thing to do when you have four bullets in you, but he he could barely keep from blacking-out, let alone keeping his balance. Punching in _911 _he didn't even hear a dial tone as the phone was automatically connected.

"911, what's your emergency?" a female voice on the other end.

"My partner and I. We've been shot," he gave the address and the woman told them two paramedic units were on their way, then the phone disconnected. he turned to look at Marie.

"Marie, you're going to get out of here," he told her. She shook her head.

"Rick," she said, using the name only she called him, "you have to nail these bast-" she cut off as she started coughing, blood coming out with the saliva.

"Stop talking," he told her, "you need to save your energy." However he had no intention of doing such a thing. He was going to keep Marie focused on _this _world, not the next. Once the paramedics got here, she would be safe.

He kept talking until the paramedics arrived. By then a circle of black was closing around his vision. Then it overtook it.

* * *

He woke up in a hospital by himself after a five-week long medically induced coma to give his major organs time to heal. One hour later his supervisor arrived, a nervous manner about him.

"Richard," the small man began anxiously.

"What is it?" he croaked. Not using his vocal chords for five weeks had done its work.

"It's about Marie," the supervisor said, the man in the hospital bed blanched. The supervisor cleared his throat, "Marie succumbed to her injuries two days ago."

For once in his life, Richard Parsons didn't know what to do or feel. It was the sort of numbness that just sort of took you over, rendered you into a stupor.

"The doctors told me to give you five weeks off for recovery," the supervisor said gingerly. Parsons only nodded. His supervisor tried to carry a little conversation with him, but Parsons answered only with silence. Eventually he left.

* * *

He was discharged three days later and they gave him the personal effects that weren't police evidence, as well as a prescription and stringent orders of only bed rest. He was left alone in a room and dressed himself in the clothes the hospital had given him. He hailed a cab and gave it an address. He told the cab to wait and ran up the stairs, despite the pain it caused the stitches on his chest, and unlocked his apartment. Major Rackham, Maries father, had given him an invitation of the funeral, which was today. He quickly dressed himself in a black suit and hurried back down the stairs. Much to his joy, the cab had waited.

* * *

Parsons almost couldn't go in and see her, lying in that casket, really, truly dead. Never to laugh or sing again. He almost turned around and left. But he had one thing he had to do, for her. He entered the room and walked up to the casket. It was open and Parsons walked up, to pay his respects. He told her of his plans for the future, how he wanted to marry her, start a family with her. But that was not going to happen now. Deftly, he slipped the letter and small, velvet covered box into the casket with her. He wouldn't feel this way about anyone else again, and that was no ones business but his.

He sat near the front and listened to every word of her eulogies. He hadn't written one. Major Rackham had offered him the chance, but Marie was too good for words. It was from that point on he decided to do what she would have done. His colleagues noticed it the moment he returned to work. No questionable tactics in Interrogation, no searches without warrants. It was almost as if Maries spirit had decided to leave her body and go into his, the way he was so by-the-book. But it took its toll. He never stayed after, hating looking at the desk that was to be filled by the beginning of May. The looks of pity and sympathy from his coworkers. By mid-April he asked to join the team in Washington, he'd had enough of the Big Apple. And so it went, the pattern continued.

* * *

His new 'team' in Washington liked him. He'd go out and have a few drinks at the end of the day, but it never went beyond that. He was a mere shadow in the office. Not participating in rubberband or stapler wars. Always clocking in and out for an exact 45 minute lunch break. One day he was assigned to investigate an MCRT. He handled it like any other case, by the book and one hundred percent legit. He gave David the heat, then let her go. He knew how it felt to have someone you loved ripped from your life when you wanted to start something good with them. He let McGee salvage his career by letting him off on a technicality. DiNozzo and Gibbs were another matter. DiNozzos career hadn't been the best before joining NCIS, but afterwards was just a disgrace. The treatment of witnesses and suspects alike was appalling, including a few incidents in autopsy a young ME in training had witnessed and reported, only to be ignored by the late Director Shepard. He would have loved to prosecute her, showing how much she had let her old flame Gibbs get away with, most of his actions clearly violating what NCIS stood for.

But eventually he fell out of touch with his work, everything began to remind him of Marie. Something she said or did. He tried not to think of her, but everyday she invaded his thoughts. Eventually he fully let her in, talking to her in the breakroom when no one else was around. But it was only her shade, a ghost of the real woman.

One day he decided he'd had enough and turned in his badge. Going home to his apartment in DC, he popped open a bottle of beer and sat down on the couch. Reaching into his coat pocket he pulled out the wrinkled picture of her he always carried. _I'm sorry I couldn't save you, _he thought. It was the same every night. He would think of what he could have done differently, trying to change the past. But he knew he couldn't. Now he had no job to distract him, he had to face it. And he did.

One night while the world was asleep, he took a Greyhound to Cincinnati, where she grew up. He walked the familiar path down the city cemetery to plot F6. He placed the roses on the headstone and knelt by the now settled dirt.

"I know I don't visit as much as I should," he began. "It should be me in the ground, not you, I know that much. I finally quit my job at HS. Took me twelve years but I finally did it," he joked, smiling a little but stopping, remembering why he was here. "I don't know what you would be doing right now, I really don't. Maybe you'd be doing relief work in Africa, I don't know. But I'm going to start living for you in the best way I can, not chaining myself to a desk working a nine-to-five," he said boldly. "You're the only person I ever loved and ever will. No one can ever measure up." Parsons raised his fingers to his lips and pressed them to the headstone, running them along her name, forever engraved in granite. "I love you Marie."


End file.
